Alfred North Whitehead Quotes
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Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking.
By Alfred North Whitehead
It is the first step in sociological wisdom, to recognize that the major advances in civilisation are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur: like unto an arrow in the hand of a child. The art of free society consists first in the maintenance of the symbolic code; and secondly in fearlessness of revision, to secure that the code serves those purposes which satisfy an enlightened reason. Those societies which cannot combine reverence to their symbols with freedom of revision, must ultimately decay either from anarchy, or from the slow atrophy of a life stifled by useless shadows.
By Alfred North Whitehead
Other nations of different habits are not enemies: they are godsends. Men require of their neighbours something sufficiently akin to be understood, something sufficiently different to provoke attention, and something great enough to command admiration. We must not expect, however, all the virtues.
By Alfred North Whitehead
The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order. Life refuses to be embalmed alive. The more prolonged the halt in some unrelieved system of order, the greater the crash of the dead society.
By Alfred North Whitehead
True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes. Rather the firm resolve of virtue and reason.
By Alfred North Whitehead
Familiar things happen, and mankind does not bother about them. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.
By Alfred North Whitehead
You cannot be wise without some basis of knowledge, but you may easily acquire knowledge and remain bare of wisdom.
By Alfred North Whitehead
We cannot think first and act afterward. From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.
By Alfred North Whitehead
Through and through the world is infested with quantity. To talk sense is to talk quantities, It is no use saying the nation is large- how large? It is no use s aying that radium is scarce- how scarce? You can not evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.
By Alfred North Whitehead
There are no whole truths all truths are half- truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.
By Alfred North Whitehead
There are no whole truths; all truths are half- truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.
By Alfred North Whitehead
The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.
By Alfred North Whitehead
The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground; for it is the past, and it is the future.
By Alfred North Whitehead
The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.
By Alfred North Whitehead
Periods of tranquility are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.
By Alfred North Whitehead
Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its song; and the sun for its radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves and should turn them into odes of self congratulation on the excellence of the human mind.
By Alfred North Whitehead
Let us grant that the pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit, a refuge from the goading urgency of contingent happenings.
By Alfred North Whitehead
It does not matter what men say in words, so long as their activities are controlled by settled instincts. The words may ultimately destroy the instincts. But until this has occurred, words do not count. - from Science and the Modern World
By Alfred North Whitehead
Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.
By Alfred North Whitehead
If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he is fond of you but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.
By Alfred North Whitehead